As wireless communications technologies develop, various future evolved wireless communications systems are emerging on the basis of a current wireless communications system. A future evolved wireless communications system may implement communication in a non-standalone working manner by using another existing wireless communications system.
For example, as shown in FIG. 1, a terminal device accesses a base station in a future evolved wireless communications system. The base station is referred to as a future evolved base station for short. Then the terminal device accesses a core network in a long term evolution (LTE) system by using an LTE base station connected to the future evolved base station.
A wireless communications system shown in FIG. 1 includes two parts: the terminal device and a network. The network includes a radio access network and a core network. There are two access network devices in the radio access network, and the two access network devices use different wireless communications standards (for example, one is a future evolved base station, and the other is an LTE base station). The two access network devices implement wireless access of user equipment, and each completes some processing in the radio access network. A current air interface configuration method used when a terminal device accesses only one radio access network device is no longer applicable to the case shown in FIG. 1.